


skeleton knee

by WingedQuill



Series: Whumptober 2020 [3]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, Dissociation, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Whump, Human Sacrifice, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Protective Jaskier | Dandelion, Rescue, Starvation, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2020-10-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:48:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26831689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WingedQuill/pseuds/WingedQuill
Summary: Geralt is offered up as a sacrifice to the goddess of famine.Jaskier saves him, one month into the ritual.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion
Series: Whumptober 2020 [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1950922
Comments: 34
Kudos: 282





	skeleton knee

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Whumptober day 3 (forced to their knees) day 7 (carrying) and day 9 (ritual sacrifice). I might write another fill for 7 and/or 9 (or add more chapters to this story, since I'd love to get into Geralt's POV and/or recovery) but I wanted to build in some free days to either work on other stuff or take a break.

Here’s the thing about Geralt and Jaskier. They both have jobs that require travel, and that travel is often in different directions—a festival in a bustling city, a warg hunt in the remote mountains. And they have learned long ago that the occasional separation is good for them. It lets Geralt drink in the peace and quiet of solitude, it lets Jaskier enjoy the hustle and bustle of the city without worrying of his lover going into sensory overload. They always come back together stronger for it, ready to face whatever the world throws at them.

(The sex is also particularly wonderful if they’ve been separated for a bit, in Jaskier’s humble opinion. Their focus just  _ sharpens  _ on each other, and Geralt gets very handsy and  _ very  _ sensitive and—well. It’s good, is the point) 

But what makes their together-apart-together dance  _ work  _ is that they’re both always at the agreed meeting place at the agreed meeting time. Jaskier demanded that, with as much room for argument as he demanded most things. He worries enough about Geralt when they’re separated, wakes screaming from dreams of Geralt bleeding out from a kikimora’s claw, a werewolf’s bite, a villager’s pitchfork. He won’t make their reunions a thing of stress, as well.

Geralt understands that. Geralt has  _ never,  _ not in all the years of loving each other, been late.

He was supposed to be here three days ago.

***

Days and weeks and months later, when Geralt is finally strong enough to start sparring with his brothers again, he will ask Jaskier how he found him.

Jaskier himself isn’t entirely sure. The time between the thought  _ Geralt is missing  _ and the thought  _ Geralt is dying  _ is as blurry as fogged-up glass. He doesn’t remember much from those weeks, except for a constant dread and nausea and the nightmares of what could be  _ happening  _ to Geralt while he’s just  _ sitting here  _ and—

He doesn’t remember much.

He remembers this though: Eventually he finds himself in an inn where all the villagers watch him with wary eyes, where the innkeeper warns him not to wander to the next town over. Not this time of year. He nods and thanks her—he’s learned to trust hollow-eyed warnings like that—and starts asking around for a white-haired witcher. 

None of them know what he’s talking about. Until the barmaid turns to the innkeeper with a horrified look, and reminds her that witchers carry two swords, a silver one and a steel one.

After that—

They have Roach. Found her wandering on the road a month ago, distressed and whinnying and looking for someone. They have Geralt’s gear, which was strapped to her back. They don’t have Geralt, but they can guess what happened to him. 

***

The next town over has a ritual, one that this town has been trying to stop for years, to no avail. A sacrifice to the goddess of famine, a tribute offered up to ease her hold over the land. A cruel ritual, the innkeeper says, each line of her face etched with sorrow and sympathy. A long ritual. 

Ease away the hunger pangs of famine by making one person suffer them all.

Jaskier stares down at his hands and tries to ignore the way his dinner sits so comfortably in his stomach.

Geralt hasn’t eaten in a month.

Maybe longer.

The innkeeper presses a bag into his hands, full of things she says he’ll need. A blanket, several waterskins filled with dissolved sugar, bandages. And a knife that gleams with chaos, which she says will cut through enchanted binds.

Jaskier doesn’t ask how she’s so well prepared, how she knows what to do in the face of the unthinkable. Her haunted, furious face tells him enough.

“Bring him back here,” she says, squeezing his hands around the bag. “When you find him. We’ll get him back in shape, okay?”

Jaskier closes his eyes.

Geralt hasn’t  _ eaten  _ in a  _ fucking month. _

How can she expect him to bring anything living back?

“Okay,” he says, because it’s nice to pretend, at least while he still can.

***

He nearly retches when he opens the door to the temple. The smell coming from inside is sheer human misery—fresh urine layered over stale, rotting food, rotting  _ flesh,  _ and something—unique, underneath it all, something that crawls up Jaskier’s neck on icy feet and sets every nerve on edge. He thinks it might be death.

He swallows. It can’t be death. He refuses to  _ let _ it be death.

The temple is simple. Small. Cushions on the floor for the goddess’s supplicants to kneel on, baskets of fruit and hunks of meat arranged along the walls—and that’s where the rotting smell is coming from. Some of it is fresh, but most of it has been left to the flies.

He takes in all of this. And then promptly dismisses it. 

Because before the altar, naked, kneeling, bound with and held up by so many ropes he looks like a spider in the midst of a great, silver web—

_ Geralt. _

He nearly drops the knife.

_ No. No, it can’t be Geralt, that  _ **_can’t_ ** _ be Geralt. It’s a fucking wraith, it’s a skeleton, it’s not— _

_ It’s not— _

He doesn’t realize he’s running until he’s halfway across the room, his footsteps like claps of thunder in the tomb-like silence of the temple. Because it’s supposed to be a tomb. He realizes that now. It’s supposed to be  _ Geralt’s  _ tomb.

He’s breathing. Jaskier knows this because he can see his ribs pressing out with each labored gasp, can watch as they stretch his skin tighter, tighter, until he’s certain it will tear. The skin of his back _.  _ He can see Geralt’s ribs from his  _ back.  _ Can see his ribs, can see each individual knob of his spine, can see his shoulder blades jutting out like mountains.

“No, no, no, no,” his thoughts spill out of him like an overflowing river. “Shit,  _ no,  _ Geralt—”

He darts around to Geralt’s front and crashes to his knees, reaching out for him with trembling hands. He’s scared to touch him. Scared that he might just shatter under his fingers. Geralt just blinks at him, long and slow. His breathing doesn’t change, doesn’t speed or slow. He doesn’t try to speak. Jaskier doesn’t think he has the energy. Might not even have the energy to realize there’s another person in the room with him.

He looks so much worse from the front. His ribs stand out even more, as does his collarbone, the sharp lines of his hips, each individual bone of his face, all shifting faintly as Geralt moves as little as a living person can. This close, Jaskier can see that even his hair is thin—there are clumps of it on the floor, great bald patches on his head, his body doesn’t even have enough strength to keep his hair on his scalp, shit, _fuck._

“It’s okay,” he stammers, just in case Geralt has enough sense to realize that Jaskier is talking to him. “You’ll be okay, I’m gonna get you out of here.”

He gathers up his courage and rests his hand on Geralt’s skull-sharp cheek. He closes his eyes, leaning into the touch like it’s the best thing he’s ever felt. And  _ fuck,  _ of course it is, to him. Of course he looks ready to sob at the faintest brush of kindness. He’s been in this place for a  _ fucking month,  _ bound to the altar and  _ starving _ as piles of food rotted around him, and Jaskier wants to burn the  _ fucking world down— _

He shudders. Draws his thumb over Geralt’s cheekbone. Later. He can be furious later, vengeful later, burning later. Now, he just needs to get Geralt safe.

It’s tempting to grab a piece of fruit from one of the many unrotten piles and press it to Geralt’s lip. But he can’t. He’s heard stories of starvation victims, fed too much, too fast. Heard stories of their hearts giving out. And he refuses to let Geralt die like that, not when he’s already suffered so much.

So. Get him out of the ropes. Get him out of the temple. Get some of that sugar water in him. Get him somewhere safe and warm. He can do that. He’s patched Geralt up enough times. What’s one more?

_ It was never like this. It was never this cruel. _

His hands first. The palms have been pressed flat and folded together, bound to his chest in a sick imitation of prayer. His whole  _ pose  _ is a sick imitation of prayer, Jaskier realizes. The bastards didn’t even let him starve on his back, they’ve kept him kneeling like this for a fucking _ month,  _ and—

Later.

Geralt whimpers when Jaskier pulls his fingers away from his cheek, and the rage settles low in his gut even as his heart breaks.

“I’ll hold you later,” he promises as he starts to work the knife between the strands of rope. They fall away easily, the enchantment breaking beneath the blade, revealing strips of rubbed-raw skin. Jaskier winces as he pulls the ropes out of Geralt’s wounds, but Geralt doesn’t even flinch. In too much pain to notice a bit more.

Jaskier is going to hit something.

Someone.

Many someones.

He unwinds the last of the rope from his arms and lowers them to Geralt’s sides. Another whimper, this one louder, more strangled. He’s shaking, the tendons of his arms twitching under Jaskier’s touch.

Right. He hasn’t moved in a month.

“I’m sorry,” Jaskier whispers, bringing his hands back to Geralt’s face. It’s wet with tears, and that breaks something else inside him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. You’re so brave, you’re doing so well, just—just be brave for a bit longer, okay?”

Geralt just blinks at him.

“Okay,” Jaskier says. “Okay.”

He holds Geralt against him, keeping him upright as he cuts away the ropes that wind around his chest and waist. They’re anchored to the walls and ceiling, keeping him from lying down, from getting any relief. Somehow, they’ve stayed taught against the skin, despite the fact that Geralt is half the man he was when Jaskier saw him last. More enchantments. Must be.

Each bit of rope reveals more open wounds, red and puffy and leaking—and with each of them, the smell of death grows a bit stronger. Infection. Jaskier curses under his breath, stroking Geralt’s hair in a futile attempt to steady himself. He stops when another clump comes away in his fingers, dropping it to the ground like he’s been burned.

He clenches his jaw against the knowledge that Geralt’s lost his fucking _ hair,  _ along with everything else that’s been done to him, and keeps working at the ropes. Infection. Okay. He can’t deal with that alone. He can’t deal with  _ any of this  _ alone, and now he realizes why the innkeeper told him to come back to her.

He wonders how many sacrifices she’s coaxed back from death.

He slips the last of the rope away from Geralt’s waist and carefully lowers him to the ground. He actually screams at that, a short, breathless sound that seems to draw every bit of energy he has left. His chest heaves wildly as Jaskier tries to soothe him, shushing him like a frightened horse.

“It’s okay. You’re  _ okay,  _ love.”

A small sob, and Geralt’s turning his head into Jaskier’s hand, huffing weakly over his palm. Jaskier brings his other hand to the back of Geralt’s neck, thumbing over his skin. They stay like that for a long moment, just breathing together as Geralt struggles through the pain.

Once he’s settled back into his labored not-all-there breaths, Jaskier turns his attention to the last bound part of Geralt. His legs are all folded up, ankles tied to his thighs to force him into a kneeling pose. Now that Jaskier has gotten him on his back, his knees stick up into the air, a towering, jagged mountain over the cavern of his torso. And his weight is off his shins for the first time in the month.

That’s what drew the scream from him, Jaskier thinks, looking at the weeping wounds that spread over Geralt’s legs from knee to ankle, the constant pressure having pounded the skin into nothing. The smell of death curls through the air like hot steam, powerful and all-covering. Fever burns in the space above Geralt’s not-skin.

_ Geralt might not survive this. _

Jaskier swallows down that traitorous thought and brings the knife to Geralt’s ankles.

“One last bit of rope,” he says. “And then you can rest,” he lies.

Geralt moans as Jaskier starts to unfold his legs— _ unstick  _ them, because the pressure sores are at the back of his calves too, and his thighs, from where the skin was pressed together by the every-lessening weight of his body. He doesn’t scream again. Jaskier doesn’t think he has the strength.

Geralt has carried Jaskier through a great many things. Through twisted ankles and djinn-shattered throats, through broken bones and broken hearts. More than that. Through countless thresholds at countless inns, pressing kisses against Jaskier’s lips. Through a hundred starlit dances, swinging Jaskier through the air and drinking in his gleeful laughter.

His love has always been so strong. A mountain, eager to shoulder Jaskier’s weight on his back, whether the reason was good or ill. And Jaskier has never even dreamed that he could return the favor, not when Geralt is so sturdy and steadfast and  _ heavy. _

But now.

Now, Jaskier tucks the blanket from the innkeeper’s kit around Geralt’s limp, barely-breathing body, moving each of those iron strong limbs as easily as a twig. Now, Jaskier murmurs an apology in his ear, and lifts him into the air. He’s as light as a child, and Jaskier bundles him against his chest and walks out of that tomb-like temple without a spark of effort.

Now, with Geralt shaking and shivering in his arms, it’s Jaskier’s turn—Jaskier’s  _ duty  _ to be strong.

Maybe he’s a coward. Maybe he’s not meant to be strong. Because he’d do anything in the world to give that duty back to Geralt.


End file.
